gradually winning its way all over Europe will open us fresh channels, even on that side of the water." This hope has been fulfilled. During the peace which followed on Waterloo, Englishmen had time to examine into the life and literature of a country, so interesting from the events which had so lately agitated its surface. The noble devotion displayed by the youth in the war of independence, and the echo of songs like Körner's, awoke a pulse of admiration and sympathy for a bravery like their own. The tales of misery and sorrow brought from cities ravaged, and by men who had themselves suffered the horrors of the occupation of Hamburg and the cruelties of Davoust, stirred the pity and the purse of England. As knowledge of the country and people, so knowledge of the language and literature increased. At first gradually, through its songs and poetry, but still later when the reaction from the materialism of an age of peace took place, the soul of these islands, in all the eager joy of a prisoner tasting the fresh breeze, abandoned itself to the spiritual and speculative philosophy of Germany.

From the youth, who are ever less conservative, the desire of investigating the products of this new soil spread to the older men. The learned doctors of our universities began to perceive that there were men more learned than themselves. The poetic darkness of history opened its secrets to the immense information and the analytic imagination of Niebuhr. Men who had devoted their whole life to those pursuits, wrote on Greek and Roman writings and antiquities with a learning which was redeemed from weariness by the power of entering into the very heart of the time they examined. Metaphysies founded a new school in Kant, and from his impulse, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and a multitude of opponents and approvers, arose. The scientific religious element developed itself on one side in Paulus, Bretschneider, and Strauss, and on the other in Nitzsch, Schleiermacher, and Neander. The evangelical element found fit and erudite representatives in Oldshausen, Hengstenberg, and many others, whose learning was not inferior to their faith.

Nor was Germany backward in the realms of science and art. The steppes of Tartary, the forests of the Orinoco, the icy slopes of South-America and Central

Asia, the plateaux of Mexico, gave up their secrets to the intellect of Alexander Humboldt; who blended them into one with the forces of the globe and the motions of the universe. Art, in the highest sense of the word, was, we had almost said, recreated by Schiller and Goethe. Lessing, Tieck, and the Schlegels wrote on criticism, and wrote themselves till a new school of criticism arose.

It was in these men that a literary nationality sprang up, and blossomed and bore fruit with a swiftness which seemed to be unnatural. It is the paradox of Germany, that she has no political existence, but yet a positive well-defined national existence. It seems as if her recognized position in the world were to be as subjective as her writings. It is only those who know and love her literature that recognize her nationality-a truth real to them, but not to all the world. The principle of nationality was grasped by the German writers, and rejected by the German rulers. Each of the former gave up his whole life and energy to the working out his own aim, with the conviction that it was the consequence of his constitution, and most fitted to develop his inner life, and therefore a duty. In carrying out this individual purpose, he never lost sight of the great principle that he was not working in an isolated field, but in the garden of the world. He never forgot that unconnected work must perish; so in striving to bring his own to perfection, he investigated all other true work at the same time, that not only he might assist himself, but assist others; that he might not perish in the Particular, but live in the Universal.

This is the idiosyncracy of the German mind-the idea of a universal connection; and this in turn resolves itself into two classes-those who made the unity depend on the eternal will of one personal Being

and those who made it consist in all things being portions of the same and of one another, and these all forming one conception-God; and this is the pantheism of the German. Variously followed out as this principle has been, it is that which pervading any community gives it national existence; for so far as each man therein does his work, as if it were the only and the most important thing in the world, and yet with a continual reference to the whole in which he works, so far will that community have true national exist

or ecclesiastically, as in the Church of Rome, or in literature, as in Germany. Our recognition of this nationality, peculiar and distinct and many-colored as it is, is due much to Thomas Carlyle. In his Essays, he has opened to us the magic gardens and caverns where the German intellect had created beauty for itself to walk in. Still his view is one-sided; only two or three faces of the Germanic cube are presented to us. So far as biography is history, so far are we satisfied with his masterly portraits. But a few individuals do not comprise the whole. Again, in Carlyle's writings the mode in which the Germans regard their own religious life, and the political, such as it is, is not known to us with sufficient clearness. Goethe, Schiller, Richter, Novalis, and others, do not come up to the standard of religious life. Some were men of ghastly doubts, others of cool rationalism, some of incomprehensible poetic metaphysics, others of weird, and sometimes savage thought, as if the spirit of the ancient Kobold were mingling with the heart of human love. Again, his very subjects shut Carlyle out from treating, except en passant, of the struggles of the German people for nationality and freedom, and the political passions which rent her, as Samson did the lion, during the storms of the Napoleonic

era.

It is because it supplies the history of these struggles from a German point of view, and gives us an insight into the other side of German belief, that we welcome the memoirs of Frederick Perthes; and especially as these subjects are combined with those of great literary interest, and all redeemed from being uninteresting and frigid by their connection with the heart and life of a brave, true, high-hearted, earnest, Christian man.

On the 21st of April, 1772, Frederick Perthes first saw the light shining over Rudolfstadt. At the age of seven he lost both his parents, and was intrusted to the care of his maternal uncle, Frederick Heubel. Loyal, pure, mingling politics with the speculations of the Kantian philosophy, studying now the classics and now anatomy, this Heubel and his sister Caroline trained the moral and intellectual nature of the boy. Often, too, Perthes would spend months with John Heubel, who lived in the castle of Schwartzburg, and whose duties led him over the forests

Admitted to the court library, his lively fancy sought for materials in histories and travels. For four years he read vast volumes, with a sprinkling of fiction; and it is a noticeable fact that the sailor Prince Henry and Albuquerque became his heroes strange elements for the thin, delicate boy, with those small hands and blue eyes of his, to grow up among: but they suited him marvellously well.

Reading brought with it no false ideality; and, moreover, this John Heubel introduced him to the realities of nature. Walking rapidly over the forests and hills which ringed the Schwartzburg, the boy gained strength, and fostered the germ of his wondrous life-activity. And nature taught that imagination, afterward so productive, her delicate lessons; and the vastness and darkness of the forest laid the foundation of veneration, and gave that sense of the Infinite which afterward developed into the loving religion of the man; while at home his Kant-loving, horseadmiring uncle, and the tender sternness of his aunt, taught more by their lives than words a high morality. Often, during this life, do we meet with this secluded knot of loving guardians. A good old age they lived to, and died not long before him they loved so well. The sense of these old people pervades this history like a clear pure air. Like beings of another world, they seem from their forest seclusion to watch their child. There is a touching beauty in the visits of Perthes to this solitude. He came to them fresh from the Lebensturm, with the atmosphere of being and doing round him; and he was received with the old love, the old simplicity, the old ceremonies. It is on record that he felt once more a child. All the turmoil and dust of life, in those brief days, must have slipped from him like a robe, as with his youthful eagerness he walked again by the side of the old soldier, and whistled to the dogs, and viewed the forest and the flood. With such an education, the mercantile life had no charms for him; and as a relative of his was in the book trade, and, as above all, there must be books to read, Perthes resolved on being a bookseller. Early on an autumn morning he left the gray old Schloss for Leipsic, to enter on his apprenticeship with Adam F. Bohme, who had already sent him back for a year, as too delicate for his profession. On his arrival Bohme said, "Why, boy, you are

room. He had not a word to say; but he ex- | perienced a calm and happiness which he had never felt before. The Christmas games began, but Perthes had eyes for nothing but the quiet expression of pleasure which beamed in Caroline's face. On the topmost branch of the Christmas-tree hung an apple, finer and more richly gilt than any. Perthes dexterously reached it, and, blushing deeply, presented it, to the no small surprise of the company, to the conscious Caroline. From that evening things went on between them as they usually do between accepted lovers."

sorrow,

Shortly afterward they were married; and Perthes, who had felt love before, which he called "torture and distraction," now understood it as 66 'peace and joy." For four and twenty years, in storm and sunshine, in death and life, in inner life and outward life, in joy and through all the terrors of a siege and all the misfortunes of a fugitive, this love begun beneath the branches of a German Christmas-tree-lasted entire and whole: a rare and perfect chrysolite. Her slender figure, white and clear brow, her regular features, the loving smile which played about her mouth, the deep, hazel eyes, were as nothing to the irresistible charm which inspired unbounded confidence in all who approached her. With a rare intellect, she found her chief pleasure in superintending her household and being a true-hearted mother. Her relations with her husband till their close were unchanged in purity, love, and faithfulness. Supporting and supported, life's burden to each was all the sweeter that it needed help to bear. Every year the wedding day was renewed with their hearts.

"It is eighteen years to-day-Caroline writessince I wrote you the last letter before our marriage, and sent you my first request about the little black cross. Perthes, my heart is full of joy and sadness. Would that you were hereyou can not quite know my indescribable affection, for it is infinite. This day eighteen years I did not long for you more fervently or more ardently than now. Thank God, over and over again, for every thing! I am, and remain yours, in time-and, though I know not how-in eternity, too. Affection is certainly the greatest wonder in heaven or on earth; and the only thing I can represent to myself as insatiable throughout eternity."

I

finement, her children sick, and utterly ignorant of her husband's place of refuge, during the calamitous year of 1813, she yet writes:

"I struggle ever more and more to keep thought and fancy, heart and yearnings, under control but, oh! my beloved, I suffer inexpressibly! tell you every thing, for you should know how things actually stand, that you may be able to do what is right under the circumstances; but I do not write thus to induce you to draw back. I take God to witness, who is more to me than thing but your duty.” even you are, that I do not wish you to do any

She was interested, and lovingly so, in all he did, and said, and thought; and her approval and advice often gave to his plans that undefinable finishing touch, for want of which, so many almost perfect things have lacked perfection. Distinct, yet capable of harmonizing, the calm, contemplative soul of Caroline, and the unfal tering activity and lightning life of Perand produced the living atmosphere of thes, mingled like oxygen and nitrogen, married life. None but those who read their letters and their lives can understand how each was an absolute necessity to the other; and how inefficient the action of had had at home a love which he felt to Perthes' life would have been, unless he be eternal, to fall back on in all moments of despondency-to give that calm and aim to all his plans which the sense of something sure ever supplies to one who is tossing on the restless sea of being. Perthes longed to fulfill his wife's wish, and Thus passed four and twenty years; and to leave business, and close his life in another sphere, where he would be able to grant her that calm and quietude of communion with him and God, which had formed the dream of her hope through all the years of the eager life in Hamburg. But sudden as a thunderbolt came paralysis, and Caroline died.